Frostpunk's Survivor Mode is icing hopeful players today

Okay, which of you asked for this? Survival-management game Frostpunk was already bad enough, turning innocent and mild-mannered RPS writers into tyrannical despots desperate to eke out just one more day in the frozen apocalyptic wastes. Today’s update threatens to push them over the edge with a new difficulty level – Survivor Mode – for those who figured even Hard was too forgiving. The new mode removes active pause mode, and limits you to a single rolling save slot. In short, it’s Ironman mode, and they’ve not solved the icing problem.

Honestly, if you’ve finished all of Frostpunk’s scenarios on the highest difficulty, I can’t see Survivor mode changing too much. Other than requiring you to carry out your building plans a little more quickly and efficiently than before, there’s usually a ‘right’ solution to most problems that you’ve already worked out by now. Survivor Mode won’t really be making any of that more difficult. Still, this update does include some additional changes, which you can see in the full patch notes here. Those with Nvidia cards can now use Ansel for fancy screenshots.

There are some exciting things on the horizon for the game though, including a new scenario called The Builders, and an endurance playmode (which would make sense paired with Survivor mode) plus a few more gubbins planned for the rest of this year. You can see what’s on the horizon in this official development roadmap. There’s also plans to continue updates well into 2019, but 11 Bit Studios are keeping further announcements under lock and key. Given how the game (ironically) sold like hotcakes, I wouldn’t be surprised to see a commercial expansion later, too.

Accompanying the release of Survivor mode, Frostpunk is currently (slightly) discounted, bringing it down to £21.24/$25.49 on GOG, Humble and Steam, give or take a few pennies.